DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Can Russia Tame Wagner in Africa Without Destroying It?
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Elian Peltier | Raja Abdulrahim | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Hours after Yevgeny V. Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenary group ended their rebellion on Saturday, officials with the Russian Foreign Ministry phoned the president of the Central African Republic to assure him that the thousands of Wagner fighters deployed in his country would stay, and that Russia would keep looking for new ventures in Africa. Thousands of miles away, and as the rebellion was still underway, Russian troops in Syria had surrounded several bases that host Wagner fighters, fearing that the contagion might spread beyond Russia. Russia’s leadership had encountered some issues with “the head of the paramilitaries,” they told the Central African president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, but those issues had been resolved and the Kremlin, they assured him, was in control. The Wagner group was the personal project of Mr. Prigozhin, who built it over nearly a decade into a sprawling enterprise, with tentacles reaching from Libya, across Africa and into the Middle East. The group has deployed troops in five African countries, and Mr. Prigozhin’s affiliates have been present in more than a dozen in total.

Persons: Yevgeny V, Prigozhin, Wagner, Russia’s, ” Organizations: Russian Foreign Ministry, Central African, Faustin, Kremlin Locations: Central African Republic, Russia, Africa, Syria, Libya

☆ With a Hand From the U.S. Military, Aid Finally Reaches a Syrian Camp
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( Raja Abdulrahim | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Over the course of Syria’s long war, a remote desert camp for thousands of displaced people grew in the shadow of an American military base, just out of reach of Syrian government forces. The Rukban camp, a few miles from the United States base at al-Tanf in southeastern Syria, ended up almost cut off from aid largely because of closed borders and a Syrian government policy to block almost all relief efforts for areas outside its control. One Syrian-American aid group worked for years to find a way to ease their plight. In recent days, the group has sent a first wave of critically needed supplies with the help of an obscure United States military provision known as the Denton Program. It lets American aid groups use available space on U.S. military cargo planes to transport humanitarian goods such as food and medical supplies to approved countries.

Organizations: United, Denton Locations: American, United States, Syria

☆ As Assad’s Isolation Lifts, Syrian Refugees Fear Pressure to Return Home
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Raja Abdulrahim | Hwaida Saad | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Early one recent morning, Lebanese soldiers swept through the Bourj Hammoud neighborhood in Beirut, emptying two buildings of the Syrian refugees living in them. They forced them into trucks and drove them to a no-man’s land between the Lebanese and Syrian borders. After days stuck along the border, hundreds of refugees were taken by Syrian forces back to Syria. The family spent their first night back in Syria sleeping on the streets of the capital, Damascus. If the soldiers ever come back, Rasha vowed, she would die before being forced back to Syria again.

Persons: Rasha, ”, “, ‘, they’ve, ’ ”, Bashar al, Assad Locations: Beirut, Syria, Damascus, Lebanon, East

☆ Israel Called Them ‘Precision’ Strikes. But Civilian Homes Were Hit, Too.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-31 | by ( Raja Abdulrahim | Samar Abu Elouf | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As the Khoswan family slept, the Israeli military dropped three GBU-39 bombs into their sixth-floor apartment. One of the bombs exploded just outside the parents’ bedroom, leaving the apartment looking as if a tornado had swept through, killing three family members. But they were not the stated target of the attack earlier this month. The Israeli military had dropped the bombs into their home to assassinate a commander of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad who lived in the apartment below. “But to target the commander and those around him, honestly this is something we didn’t expect.”

Persons: Jamal Khoswan, Mirvat, Tareq Izzeldeen, Menna Organizations: Palestinian, Islamic, “

☆ The Long Isolation of Syria’s al-Assad Is Over
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Vivian Nereim | Raja Abdulrahim | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When a devastating earthquake struck in February, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria spotted opportunity in disaster. He called for an end to international sanctions on his country and within days, some were suspended. Other Middle Eastern states sent planeloads of aid and senior officials from those countries soon followed for the first high-level visits in years. In the three months since, Mr. al-Assad has made a remarkable comeback, going from more than a decade of near-total global isolation after a series of atrocities, to being welcomed back into the Arab fold with virtually no strings attached. Mr. Assad was shunned for brutally suppressing his country’s Arab Spring uprising in 2011, which morphed into a civil war that has ground to a standstill, but has still not ended.

☆ What Is Islamic Jihad and Why Is Israel Targeting It?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Raja Abdulrahim | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group based in Gaza, was the target of Israeli airstrikes early Tuesday, and was at the center of a flare-up in violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip last summer. What is Islamic Jihad? The second-largest Palestinian armed resistance group in Gaza, Islamic Jihad has often been eclipsed by the larger Hamas movement, which has controlled and governed Gaza since 2007. Islamic Jihad was founded in the 1980s in the Gaza Strip to fight the Israeli occupation and maintains a presence in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Iran supports both groups with funding and weapons, and Israel and the United States list both as terrorist organizations.

☆ Palestinians Demand Israel Hand Over Body of Prominent Prisoner
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Raja Abdulrahim | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Since his death on Tuesday, Israel has not returned his body to his family and the government won’t say whether it intends to do so. “It’s collective punishment,” said Hassan Jabareen, the director of Adalah, a Palestinian human rights organization and legal center. Many other Palestinians along with international human rights groups have echoed this criticism, saying the withholding of bodies punishes the families of the dead collectively and could violate international law. Since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, Israeli authorities have retained the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians who either died in prison or were killed during security incidents. They keep some in freezers for years at the National Center of Forensic Medicine, or bury them in graves with no headstones in what Palestinians call “the cemetery of numbers,” according to the Jerusalem Legal Aid & Human Rights Center.

☆ Palestinian Detainee Dies in Israeli Prison After Hunger Strike
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Raja Abdulrahim | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Khader Adnan, a Palestinian prisoner who had been on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison for 87 days to protest his detention, died early Tuesday, according to his lawyer and Palestinian and Israeli officials. It was Mr. Adnan, 44, who helped usher in the practice of individual hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners, conducting a 66-day strike in 2011 that inspired others to use it as a means of protesting Israel’s incarceration of Palestinians, especially the practice of administrative detention. This time, Mr. Adnan had been on a hunger strike since his arrest on Feb. 5. In recent days, Israeli doctors had warned that his death was “imminent” and called for him to be transferred to a hospital. Israel had accused Mr. Adnan of being affiliated with Islamic Jihad, an armed Palestinian resistance group, and he was arrested on suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization, support for terrorism and incitement.

☆ As Gaza Celebrates Eid, a Gift for Women — and a Duty for Men
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Raja Abdulrahim | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

GAZA CITY — On the morning of Eid al-Fitr, Arafat Helles will start the day with a special prayer at the mosque to mark the end of Ramadan, and eat a breakfast of salty cheeses to line his stomach for what is to come. Then, he will set out with his three brothers and father across the Gaza Strip. At each home, the men will be plied with coffee and sweets. After little more than 15 minutes, the social calls will end — a rarity in a society where such visits may last for hours, and often end in an invitation to stay for dinner. “This is the eidiya visit,” said Mr. Helles, 48, a professor of social services at Al-Quds Open University, in Gaza.

☆ After Settler Attacks, a Palestinian Town Fears for Its Survival
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Raja Abdulrahim | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

From Jan. 1 to March 13, the United Nations recorded 219 settler-related attacks that led to four Palestinian deaths as well as injuries or damage to Palestinian property, more than twice the number in the same period last year. Israeli forces killed more than 70 Palestinians in the West Bank over that period. Attacks by Palestinians on settlers have also more than doubled in that period, with 20 this year, resulting in the deaths of 12 settlers and one foreigner, the United Nations said. Palestinians say the repeated attacks by settlers are aimed at driving them off their land. In 2021, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank was more than 465,000, according to Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlement activity.

Search resuls for: "Raja Abdulrahim"

10 mentions found